The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicals with the overall threat of terrorism having grown since the 9/11 attacks, according to an assessment by US intelligence agencies.
A classified assessment in the National Intelligence Estimate attributed a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released last Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, the New York Times reported on Sunday, quoting officials involved in preparing it or who have read the final document.
Titled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has 'metastasized and spread across the globe.'
The report said that the 'Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse.' An opening section of the report, Indicators of theSpread of the Global Jihadist Movement, cited the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of radical ideology.
The paper said it was unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticised individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document were quoted as saying its conclusions were not 'softened or massaged for political purposes.'
The report concluded that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of 'self-generating' cells inspired by Al Qaeda's leadership but without
Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked radicalism, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat.
Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate were quoted as saying that it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists will once again strike on United States soil.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by US intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services, the Times said.
More than a dozen officials and outside experts interviewed by the paper included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed, the paper said, had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts.
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D Negroponte, director, national intelligence, the paper said.
Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House 'played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.'
